The South Riding Folk Arts Network is a website that brings together news, events and information about the folk arts in Sheffield and surrounding areas.

Email Problems

20 Apr 2010 – Mark Gibbens

Just a quick note to say that we’re experiencing email problems at the moment. It seems that the level of spam we’re receiving has reached such an all time high that it’s crippling our email server.

I’m working to fix this at the moment, but it’s quite likely that any emails sent to us in the last couple of weeks will have gone astray. I’ll post a further update here when we’ve got on top of the problem.

Apologies for any inconvenience.
 Mark.

Features

Carol Singing in the Blue Ball

The Sheffield Carols

The mass singing in some of the pubs in North Sheffield and North Derbyshire, which takes place in the second half of November and all December, and which is often referred to as ‘The Sheffield Carols’, has been described as one of the most remarkable instances of popular traditional singing in the British Isles.

Local compositions, and Christmas songs that have been pushed out of the mainstream of our national carol repertoire with the adoption of the sanitised and limited group of ‘standard’ carols that now pours from our radios, tv, cd players, shopping malls and churches, have survived in these unofficial places, kept alive by the sheer love of singing of the participants.

Read about The Sheffield Carols in full, or visit the brand new Local Carols website, packed full of information about the carols.

cover art: Classic English Folk Songs

Classic English Folk Songs

Additions, corrections and supplementary material for Classic English Folk Songs (originally The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs), revised and updated by Malcolm Douglas and published by The English Folk Dance and Song Society in association with SRFAN.

cover art: Marrow Bones

Marrow Bones

Additions, corrections and supplementary material for Marrow Bones: English Folk Songs from the Hammond and Gardiner MSS, revised and updated by Malcolm Douglas and Steve Gardham, and published by The English Folk Dance and Song Society.

“South Riding”—a note

Yes, we do know that our name is a contradiction in terms. Once in a while, somebody writes in to point this out. A kind thought, no doubt, but redundant: we knew it from the start, and chose it for exactly that reason. There used to be a page somewhere round here going into detail; once we find it again it will re-appear…